With stormwater, Gore wants to pressure county
As Fort Myers Beach readies itself to continue construction of its stormwater system, one council member wonders if it can simply drop its role in the project and let Lee County go it alone.
Tracey Gore is arguing that most of the flooding on the island occurs where the side streets, which the town own, meet Estero Boulevard, which the county owns. The standing water found after storms at the entrances to streets like Andre-Mar Drive and Sterling and Dakota avenues are examples, so Gore is suggesting the town wring its hands of the project, which is already more than $2 million in debt, and force the county to add the outfalls (drainage mechanisms) that will send the water under the side streets and into the bays. At this point, the town is taking on the responsibility and cost of installing the outfalls.
“If Estero (Boulevard) is fixed, then the town is fixed,” said Gore at an April 18 meeting. She feels the county could be forced to cooperate and take on the installation of the outfalls if it has nowhere to send its water.
“If we say we aren’t doing anything, the county will still have to do its thing,” she said.
Currently, the town is installing water lines, in conjunction with TECO’s gas lines, just ahead of the county’s work. The county is creating an inverted crown in the center of Estero Boulevard to allow for drainage into a system below that will include water treatment – something that is required and that the town doesn’t have. Currently, untreated stormwater is running into the bays and polluting them. Whether most of it comes from Estero Boulevard, which now has a traditional crown sending the water to its sides, or from the side streets themselves is debatable.
What’s not debatable if the fact the county’s project has been designed with the understanding of connecting to town-installed outfalls, said Tetra Tech’s Danny Nelson, the project’s engineer on behalf of the town. The county would be paying the town an undetermined amount for those hookups.
Scott Baker, the town’s director of public works, also argued against Gore’s stance.
“A lot of side streets flood on their own,” he said. “If Estero (Boulevard) is fixed, they still will.”
Negotiations regarding who plays what role at what cost is ongoing, Town Manager Don Stilwell said.
But he is against the idea of trying to hold the county hostage and doesn’t see the situation becoming any sort of a standoff.
“We need each other on this,” he said. “It can’t become a tit-for-tat sort of thing.”
While the council is nervous about going forward without a funding mechanism in place – the idea it did so previously has prompted the town’s Audit Committee to apply a policies and procedures measure to eliminate that temptation again – it does have some tools to work with now that voters on March 15 approved lifting the three-year borrowing restriction. There’s also the state’s revolving loan fund, with which the town can better position itself as being on the road to debt free now that it has the new stormwater fee in place, which is only being applied toward the existing debt and a $50,000 facilities study. That fee is an average of $19.98 per month.
Regarding those fees, Baker recently reported that $98,000 had been billed out in April as the first installment.
As for disputes on the impervious-surface measuring technique, he said about 20 were in the hopper and would require re-examination. Baker said the town is working on a credit policy for those with legitimate cases. The appeal process, which went into effect March 1, must be completed within 90 days.
Tetra Tech will provide the town with the facilities study this summer. It will indicate the areas where the project should next focus.
Already completed are: In 2011, the area north of Times Square, where the town owns both Estero Boulevard and the side streets; in 2015, the southern neighborhoods of Laguna Shores and Bay Beach; and in 2015, the “Basin Based” neighborhood between and the post office and Tropical Shores Way.
Beyond money used from the town’s general to fund the work was a $500,000 hazard mitigation grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The town will likely be pursuing a similar grant going forward.